UQ Holder Series Review – Well, I Made it to the End

Posted on by Karandi
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Overview:

Tota is your usual powerless nothing in the village from the sticks but his guardian is something quite special. Their ordinary life disrupted, Tota is going to learn about fighting, magic and immortals and his ordinary life is never going to be the same.

This is a follow up to a series of OVA’s about the grandfather apparently though I hadn’t heard of them and hadn’t watched them.

Review:

This review is going to be pretty brief because basically you either like the formula UQ Holder is delivering or you don’t. Check list of things you need to like to really get into this anime:

  • All types of girls and many excuses to blow their clothes off or leave them disrobed
  • Generic protagonist that wants to be strong and protect everyone and for some reason is actually able to get strong (though may not end up protecting everyone)
  • Action sequences that go on a little bit too long and rely heavily on spectacle
  • Humour that mostly involves nudity or physicality
  • A story line that drifts from one thing to the next

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I didn’t actually dislike UQ Holder at any point but it isn’t exactly something I would rush to recommend to someone. You can kind of just turn your brain off and watch Tota charge at more or less everything and power up when it is suited to the narrative for him to do so. There are some interesting bits of history and lore in the story, though having not seen or read any of the prequel material I probably missed a few things there.

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Probably the worst thing about the show is that it ends with the bad guy doing a ‘I’ll get you next time’ and disappearing. So no resolution there and then the show ends the final episode on a cheap gag.

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The show really plays off the fact that most of the cast can’t be killed. Fights get seriously over the top very quickly and regardless of how you slice and dice the characters you know they are just going to get back up later. There’s seldom a reason to feel any real concern.

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Anyway, if you are curious, try the first episode. The first five minutes more or less tell you what sort of viewing experience you are going to have so you can make your own call. Don’t expect it to get any better or worse than its opening as consistency is one of this show’s key strengths.

Episode Reviews:

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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UQ Holder Episode 12: They Finished The Fight But Not The Story

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

Last week they left us with a fight between Tota and his friends and Negi and his friends in the stadium and this week kind of concludes that fight. Kind of as in the bad guys leave but that’s about all the resolution you are going to get in this series.

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Still, if you are watching this show because you enjoy girls having their clothes blown off, this episode gives you a whole bunch of naked girls. Also lots of bangs and kabooms, shouting, characters being emotionally unstable, and occasionally the main character remembers he has a sword. Basically this ended how it started. It isn’t an unwatchable mess but it isn’t particularly good. I’ll get around to a series review soon.

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Karandi James.

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UQ Holder Episode 10: Tota is a…

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

I really love how shows go from telling us nothing, to revealing something and then every single character in the show just openly talks about that thing as if it was always obvious (by the way that was sarcasm). ACCA did the same thing when Jean’s past was identified and suddenly everyone just kind of openly discussed it with each other and with him even though prior to the reveal to the audience everyone had been so closed mouthed about it. Where ACCA would get a pass though i that the reveal was kind of clever in the first place whereas UQ Holder just seems to continue its trend of stuff happens because it does narrative path.

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After the reveal last week that Tota is actually a two year old clone (that explains his behaviour) he’s trying to come to terms with that and everyone is now wanting to discuss his grandfather with him. of course they all have incredibly fond memories of him and it is so unfortunate that he has now been taken over by an evil entity (though the audience has not yet been told what said entity is after or why it is evil so we really don’t have any reason to care other than a few of the older characters seem to think it might be a problem).

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We have a contrived fight sequence with Tota getting beaten down, before his friends call out to him rallying his strength so that he can finally hit his opponent, which leads to the ‘it’s a girl’ reveal, before she chuckles and the real big bad appears and it looks like it is all over, but then Evangeline swoops in to save the day, and then both the bad guys and good guys side-kicks rush in and… how many clichés were they planning on shoving into one sequence?

Whichever way, this episode was decent. No original thought whatsoever and only passable delivery, but it was passable and all of those clichés exist for a reason and they are kind of exciting to watch unfold even if the overall narrative is eye-roll worthy.

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Karandi James.

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UQ Holder Episode 9: What Does Anyone Expect From an Episode Called “Love, Baths and Vigorous Exercise”?

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

This episode begins and ends with Tota seeking answers from Evangeline and getting at least one decent revelation by episode’s end. Which I’m guessing is meant to make us think the rest of this is worth our time.

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I’m just not sure I’m in for a random bath sequences with B list characters who seem to only exist for scenes like this. I’m not sure when Tota acquired full harem status but it has been building for awhile. The issue is, the various love interests don’t actually seem to have anything to do with the main plot that keeps getting sidelined while the girls literally fight over who gets to wash Tota’s back.

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Even Kuroumaru, who actually used to be interesting, has been reduced to love struck maiden getting involved in stupid fights that serve no purpose given the protagonist remains oblivious to anything going on around them anyway. And when the whole thing is resolved by nothing changing you start questioning why you just gave the sequence nearly twenty minutes of your life.

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I don’t actually dislike this show, I just don’t see much point to it. It feels like you could recut the plot points of the story and end up with about one episode worth of material at this point.

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Karandi James.

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UQ Holder Episode 8: Curious

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

The fight plays out after last week and we get a few twists and turns but mostly just immortals of various sorts hacking, leaping and pounding on each other with some magic thrown in because it kind of looks cool I guess. I was surprised that the UQ Holders actually came out ahead on this fight but even then, it isn’t like they won much.

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It is hard to take Fate seriously because he is trying so hard to be a bad guy and it is almost as though the plot is screaming that he’s actually just a mis-understood genius. I’m like him to just be a villain but I somehow don’t think that’s where this will go.

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I guess if you like immortal characters fighting before playing question time, there’s something to enjoy about this episode. It isn’t actually bad as we do seem to have progressed forward, but it wasn’t exactly memorable, even with the chameo from Tota’s apparently not-dead grandfather.

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Karandi James.

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UQ Holder Episode 7: The Girl Who Cries Incompetent

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

This week we learn about Kirie and her particular brand of immortality (though I’m going to call this one a cheat because she isn’t immortal – she’s just able to avoid death through time travel, though I wonder if she’s actually as young as she looks or if there is something else going on). Anyway, we learn about a guy named Fate something-or-other and that he is after Tota so after many resets Kirie manages to convince Tota to follow her plan and they all get ready to capture Fate. And it goes about as well as expected even though we haven’t actually seen the outcome yet it is more or less a given that this is all going to go to hell very quickly.

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Tota is an idiot. That has been clearly and repeatedly established, though he’s the kind of idiot that isn’t overly annoying so we’ll just move on. There is however a clear difference between being an idiot and being incompetent and if you ask me the label of incompetent belongs to the time traveller who gets herself killed nine times before she even manages to execute a plan, and to be honest the plan is pretty rubbish even before we find out why it isn’t going to work. It was never going to work.

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So basically this episode is set up and laying ground work for a fight that may or may not be over quickly next week. My money is may not because as much as it looks like Tota and the group should be toast, they’ll probably surprise us with some resistance and maybe they’ll even get to run away. I’m betting on them getting a severe beating and Tota being taken though. Better plot progression if that happens.

The question then becomes why on earth would anyone want to kidnap Tota. The guy is an idiot. An immortal, part vampire, possessing some bizarre power… but still an idiot.

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Karandi James.

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UQ Holder Episode 6: Surprisingly Sweet

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

Early on in this episode I kind of had one of those moments where your stomach just kind of flops as you realise that things are about to go downhill. The revelation the Kuromaru is neither male or female and has a choice and probably has a crush on Tota just opened up a whole range of really distasteful scenarios that I didn’t really want to sit through. And, it isn’t that I was trying to run this show down, it is just that given they sneezed girls’ clothes off earlier in the show and haven’t shied away from bath scenes and random clothing destruction, this fear was kind of grounded on precedent.

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Surprisingly enough though, the show actually treats this scenario mostly decently and we end up with a relatively sweet date sequence between the two characters with Kuromaru pretending to be a female cousin. The fight sequence in the second part of the episode was also pretty entertaining.

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So while this episode didn’t blow my socks off, I was pretty happy with how it went and this show continues to be pretty decent to watch even though it isn’t exactly amazing.

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Karandi James.

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UQ Holder Episode 3: Immortal Girls and Monsters

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

I have to wonder what this show actually thinks is its selling point. The action, while fun and all, isn’t particularly well animated and since pretty much every character of note is an immortal there is pretty much zero tension or reason to actually be concerned about the outcome. They try to alleviate the lack of tension by adding an artificial time limit for a test, but really given the basic narrative structure there was no other way for the test to end, so again, zero tension.

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If we looked at it from a comedy point of view, to be honest it is somewhat lacking. Not dreadful mind you, but there’s definitely better action/comedy shows out there if that’s what you are after. And the fan-service this week kind of vanished, so if that was your draw you are going to be out of luck.

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Mind you, none of this stops the episode being watchable enough. It just isn’t anything special and the show as a whole isn’t anything special. As I’m deciding my final watch list over the weekend, I seriously question whether this one will stay on it.

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Karandi James.

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